Position Statement

The international normal labour and birth research conference series has been running since 2001, in the UK and in many countries around the world. The theme this year is about optimising safety and personalisation in maternity care.

The conference brings together and disseminates the developing international science and evidence about the nature of physiological labour and birth. It includes practice based evidence and debate on how to ensure that midwives, obstetricians, neonatologists, and others are enabled to provide safe, personalised care, in mutually respectful collaboration within and between staff groups, and with service users themselves. This includes the timely recognition of, and appropriate response to, emerging problems in labour and birth and the early postnatal period.

The overarching aim of the conference series is to enable women and birthing people who want a spontaneous labour and birth to access the latest evidence, and to ensure that they are supported by competent, caring staff who can work seamlessly together to optimise respectful care and safe outcomes (clinically, psychologically, emotionally and culturally), wherever they are based, around the world.

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